Descended from Red Hook’s Good Fork, Insa serves Korean food, including cook-at-your-table barbecue, and is also notable for a dining room ringed with karaoke rooms — once unusual, but now part of an entertainment mix in the immediate neighborhood that includes shuffleboard and rock climbing.

Founded by Yeworkwoha Ephrem, Ghenet (“heaven”) has long been a mainstay of Gowanus dining, a destination for parties — it can accommodate fairly large ones — dates, and late evening suppers. Dining is communal, over big trays of injera bread. Chicken doro wett is a favorite, but you could do just as well with the vegetarian assortment, or the asa tibs, which features a whole fried fish.

There is no cooler place to hang out in the summer than Parklife — presumably named after the great Blur album. Over the years it has undergone several transformations of the menu in its graveled, fenced yard, and the current menu incorporates Tex Mex and Persian flavors, via chef Scott Koshnoodi. Included are such things as octopus tacos with smoked lentils, and a chicken taco with yogurt.

Housed in what used to be a pasta factory, the maximalist Cafe Mars is decked out with custom chairs with neon pink squiggly legs, and accents like a three-foot-tall pepper mill. Dishes are equally over the top, with some elements referencing Italian Itameshi cuisine. There’s Parmesan-cured fluke with “crazy water,” and a steak pizzaiolo with “penne fries” and tomatoes, and for dessert black olive marble cake.

The lovable Wangs is really just a kitchen, a window, and a dining patio out front — killer in the warmer months. Most of its offerings involve fried chicken, of which the best thing is a banh mi sandwich. The Korean-style wings are good, and there’s also Taiwanese popcorn chicken, a chicken salad, loaded baked potato, and quite an array of vegetable sides.

Baba’s is a Slovak cafe that sells a dozen different pierogi varieties, including some surprising ones. The mac-and-cheese pierogi is a favorite, but then so is spinach and feta. Don’t worry: the usual sauerkraut and caraway, potato and cheese, and plain farmers cheese are also available, steamed or fried. Kielbasy sandwiches, salads, and soups are also worth grabbing, especially if heading for a picnic on the canal.

Bison & Bourbon is a glatt kosher steakhouse that offers way more that its name suggests — but no dairy, of course. The steak list alone is formidable, but then there are kebabs, meat pastries, sesame-crusted fish, chicken shawarma, pizza, Caesar salad, and duck ravioli. Outdoor seating is available.

Do you love pie? This pie pioneer from South Dakota sisters Emily and Melissa Elsen also serves as a coffee shop and popular daytime hang among Gowanus denizens. Bittersweet chocolate pecan, buttermilk chamomile, salted apple caramel, and black bottom oat are a few of their specialties, but do drop by to see what they have on any given day.